On 2/16/16 6:23 AM, Daniel Burnett wrote:
> +1 for Subject. Not only does it work well when humans are the
> Subject, it works also when non-humans are. For example, in a claim
> that no antibiotics were found in the cow just before it was killed
> for meat, the cow is the Subject of the claim. Or in a claim that a
> car was in exactly two accidents in the state of California, the car
> is the Subject. It has the advantage of not implying whether the
> Subject is the initiator of the claim or whether the claim was made
> about the Subject independent of any action on the Subject's part.
Yes. I think Bearer (or Holder) is potentially more confusing for the
cow or machine. It would be as if we're attempting to say that the cow
or machine has some agency or part in the process, which they don't,
and this might cause an extra step for outsiders trying to understand
what the referents are.
In the current Use-cases terminology,
http://opencreds.org/specs/source/use-cases/
there's a 'holder' defined:
"An entity that is in control of a particular credential. Typically a
holder's identity is also the primary subject of the information in a
credential. A holder is often the entity that initiates the
transmission of a credential."
But this seems to leave out the cow and machine situations, or
tangentially inversely refers to them in the word 'typically'.
So it seems that the word 'Subject' would be required anyway, in the
cow and machine situation, even if there's still a 'holder', who
'holds' the claim about the cow.
But then 'subject', if it's already included as a basic defined term,
could also be used as a single word when the person-who-it's-about is
the 'subject'. In those cases, which would be a lot of the cases,
'holder' wouldn't be required.
In other words, it looks like a useful change to the existing
terminology might be to use 'Subject' as the main word, with 'holder'
only used as an additional category when needed because the claim is
about a cow or machine. :-)
Steven